Freelance Philosophy Friday 3: Your time is not your value

22. Jan, 2010 0 Comments

When we as freelancers do a job on an hourly basis, we have an inherent conflict of interest.

Say a freelancer has a piece of work that is going to take about 10 hours. It benefits the client for the freelancer to work really intensely and get the work done in 9 hours, but it benefits the freelancer to take his time and do it in 11 hours.

For a freelancer who wants to improve the client’s business, it’s a bit of a dilemma.

What if that job, through a different approach, could be done in only an hour instead? Or through a worse approach, would take 20 hours?

The time you spend isn’t necessarily correlated to the value your provide.

Your time is not your value, The results you create is your value.

Here are some tips on how to use this philosophy to increase your value without spending more time.

Strive to be doing higher level work

Low level work has more competition. People that only do low level work are replaceable, and their work doesn’t have as much value. Outsource low level work and free up time to look for bigger jobs.

Strive to be doing customised work

Work that is always the same can be outsourced or automated cheaper than what you can do it for. Customised work and solving problems calls for more expertise, and makes for lots less competition.